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Facebook says it won't make companies pay to sell things through Messenger

Oct 13, 2015, 02:12 IST

Facebook

David Marcus, the Facebook exec in charge of its chat app Messenger, learned a thing or two from his former employer, eBay.

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Like that margins in the payments industry are tiny compared to the revenue you can make from advertising.

Marcus told Wired's David Rowan that Facebook doesn't plan to take a cut of transactions that happen between companies and people via Messenger.

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Facebook recently started letting retailers and users chat through the app, as part of an ultimate plan to bring a "one-tap purchase experience" to Messenger.

Because of Marcus' payments background (he was president of PayPal), it seemed natural that Facebook might try to squeeze money from the organic interactions between people and businsses on Messenger by taking a cut of each transaction.

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He insists, however, that Facebook would rather entice as many businesses into using the app and payments feature as possible by making it free, and then monetize it with ads.

For example, Facebook is working on a "click-to-message" ad type where companies pay when users click the message button on one of their ads. Or it could charge businesses to send message push notifications to specific Facebook users.

Facebook also just announced some new initiatives that increase its appeal as a shopping platform. Those efforts - like a new Shopping section where people will be able to search directly for products sold on Facebook - combine with the Messenger capabilities to make Facebook's apps a more ideal platform for e-commerce.

Here's how Marcus responded when asked whether it's going to take a cut from Messenger transactions:

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